Limited Voices in My Head(SHUT UP)

[Ira]

Mary smiled sweetly at the cute guy behind the counter- Kyle, his nametag read- before heading toward the right wall. After a quick conversation and swipe of a credit card, Mary had officially acquired her membership to the Infinity Gym. What a nice name! Snazzy! The front desk guy didn't seem to be into Mary, probably gay, she wouldn't judge. But otherwise everything was going great so far!

Along the front right wall hung a few of those big, kickythingies. Whatever boxers punched, they were filled with sand? Sandbags? No that was wrong- whatever. Mary wasn't here for them anyway. The concrete wall behind them is what Mary had her sights set on. Humming a jaunty little tune, Mary pulled some tape from her pocket and a little picture.

She was dressed a little differently than normal. Mary had finally gotten enough money to buy clothes in her size- and not from goodwill! She should've gotten into the Meta-hating business much sooner, lots of cash in there. She wore a cute pair of shorts with 'F*CK OFF' printed across the backside, a black tank top band tee over a white sports bra, and a worn pair of converse shoes. Her hair, black and short, did nothing to distract from the fact that she was showing a lot of skin in this gym. Of course, such a thing wasn't abnormal, there were other things abnormal about Mary.

"The voices in my head keep on tellin me I'm gonna diiieeeee~"

Her arms were covered in massive, long, deep scars along the inside of her veins. As if she had been cut and bled purposefully like a hung pig. Her shoulders and back were riddled with little scars, bruise that weren't healing, and more than a few burn marks. But her legs, by far, were the most frightening. Looking like a surgeon's botch job, massive scars covered nearly every inch of visible skin along her legs. As if she had been set on fire, had every bone in her body broken in the wrong direction, then badly slammed back together by a back alley veterinarian.

Well, excepting the veterinarian part, that is what happened. Mary wondered if her life would have been better if she had just gotten student loans and gone into veterinarian school. No- probably not. She didn't really like animals.

"I'm losin' my mind but I don' wanna talk about it!~"

She tapped the picture of the hero, Phoenix, onto the concrete wall. Then, with a quick shout, Mary punch the picture with full force. Over, and over, and over again. With each strike, the sound turned away further and further from 'BAP! BAP! BAP!' of hitting the wall and closer to the wet, awful 'SCHLAP! SCHLAP! SCHLAP!' Of a mangled, bloodied fist staining the wall.

"Please don't make this last forever!~"

 

[Phoenix]

Sam was just finishing a barre class when she returned around the corner to the front of the gym. At first, she didn’t notice anything off. Then, slowly, she became aware of the fact that the people who were there had stopped practicing. She looked around– and then saw it. Her blood ran a bit cold when she looked upon the figure of Mary, the girl whose brother she had killed. The younger woman was punching a wall, and from the looks of it, her hands were becoming… messy.

In a quick movement, she slung her small red towel over the edge of the boxing ring and started to hurriedly move toward her. She got there just as blood started to appear on the picture taped to the wall. It was only as she came up and placed a hand on Mary’s shoulder that she realized it was a press shot of her. It was a photo of Phoenix. The chill in her blood deepened as she carefully forced a small smile.

“Hi! Can I ask you to please stop hitting the wall?” Her touch was gentle and light as she spoke softly but urgently, trying to get her to listen as quickly as possible. Her orange curls swayed over her shoulder from their high ponytail as she looked at the girl’s hands where they were bloodied and cracked. “I’d like to ask you to let me look at your hands, if I may.”

She swallowed hard as flashes of that night passed through her mind. Of the crack of the boy’s neck, the boy who’s name she had never asked Todd about out of shame. She remembered all the blood and the bullets and how they had all dropped. She remembered trying to shake Mary out of her stupor. And she remembered that blank stare in the woman’s eyes. She hadn’t looked like this back then, all scarred and broken.

What had happened to her?​

 

[Ira]

Mary jolted as the voice, gentle but with an undercurrent of urgency, pulled her out of her internal issues. Turning, Mary looked at the woman who approached her and froze. A look of deep confusion, as if she was trying to place Sam's face, played plainly across her face for a few seconds. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, she smiled.

"Heeey~ I know you's! You's the owner- ya?"

Mary's hands, shaking terribly and dripping with blood, were held in front of her for Sam to examine. The splits were deep and powerful, evidence of how hard she had been striking the wall despite the short amount of time before her interruption. In a few places, a little glint of white bone could even be seen. The pain was incredibly, shooting like lightning through Mary's entire body from her knuckles to her toes. It was horrible. It was invigorating. It was power.

The smile still playing across Mary's features, the young woman began speaking even as tears of pain rolled unbidden down her cheeks. "Oh sorry 'bout all that-" She gestured to the wall, "I didn't know this ain't the right wall for it! Do you's got another wall for punchin'? Oh- hehehe- sorry!" Mary's entire body shuddered with her giggle, goosebumps and shaking rippling across her skin in waves, "Where my manners at? I'm Mary! Nice to meet you's!"

Mary crooked her head, adding, "Have I seen you's before?"

 

[Phoenix]

This was bad. She looked over Mary’s hands when they were presented to her and kept her face calm as she spotted glints of bone. Her eyes flickered back up to the wall, where the image of her in costume was tapped. She looked up to Mary’s face, which wasn’t hard given how close in height they were. Only a few inches difference, really. Her eyes searched the girl’s face with an almost sadness.

“I don’t have any punching walls. What I do have is punching bags and also other workout materials. Typically, you don’t punch brick walls.” She looked back at the wall. Brick, painted white when she had bought the place, now painted with colorful murals she had done herself. There was blood around the photo of her, as well as seeping through it. That was going to be hard to clean up.

She let Mary’s hands go and gestured for her to follow her. “Come on, I can’t let you walk around with your hands like that. Let me patch you up. You don’t seem like the kind to go to a hospital.”

Sam walked and only looked back over her shoulder to make sure Mary was following her. A deep pit of anxiety had started in her stomach, and her energy was bubbling unevenly under her skin. She had never met someone again whose family member she had killed. It wasn’t a fun experience, having to be around Mary like this.​

 

[Ira]

Mary frowned as the woman let go of Mary's hands and gestured her to follow. That was weird. She didn't offer name back when Mary introduced herself, nor did she answered Mary's question of familiarity. Was this woman's mind somewhere else?

How could it be somewhere else? Mary was bleeding all over her floor! Her frown twisted into a look of confusion as she followed the other woman, asking quietly so as to not embarrass this woman in her own gym.

"Hey, you's seem distracted. Everything ok at home?" Another shiver of pain as a gentle breeze from the air conditioning blew over Mary's exposed knuckle bones. She giggled and winced simultaneously as she continued, "I know we's don' really know each other, but I'ma good listener!"

And that was true! Mary didn't share other people's secrets with anyone. Not that she had any friends or boyfriends to expose secrets to, for that matter, but weren't those facts inconsequential? Mary was a great friend, she just needed friends to demonstrate her greatness.

 

[Phoenix]

Mary’s offer to listen made Sam’s stomach turn. She smiled weakly at the younger woman as she walked her back toward the office. God, if only Todd were here. He’d probably know how to handle this. She hadn’t seen him for a day, almost two, but that wasn’t unusual. She suppressed a sigh as she shook her head.

“Thank you, but I’m okay.” She paused, then continued. “Right. I’m Samantha Walsh. And you’re right, I’m the owner of the gym. Your hands look really bad. But I should be able to stitch those up.”

They walked into the hall between the two sections of the gym, and she led her to a door marked “Employees Only”. Opening it revealed a small office set up, with a desk, a few chairs, a filing cabinet, a few shelves, and a computer. She ushered Mary in and closed the door behind her. Only then, after they were alone, did she hesitantly ask, “So. That woman in the photo. It was really blurry. Who is she? Obviously someone who you don’t like, if she’s got you punching walls.”

She gestured to a chair, one with a fabric back and seat, a little rough looking but still comfortable, and started digging through the bottom drawer of the desk for the first aid kit they kept for emergencies. There were more basic first aid supplies on the shelf, but this kit was the one with the suture materials and the disinfectants.​

 

[Ira]

Samantha Walsh, as she said her name was, said she was ok. Mary frowned. Mary didn't believe that at all. There had been something before, something that was still rippling underneath the other woman's skin. Mary hadn't noticed it at first, Mary's own pain was so extraordinarily distracting. But as Mary sat down in a chair in the employee only section of the building, she was able to think through the shooting pain for a few seconds to feel- the something.

What was it? A knot that built up in the stomach, a churning, twisting thing was burrowing its way through the other woman. Mary winced, unable to focus on it as her knuckles radiated with sharpness once again. That would need to be nipped in the bud, Mary needed to know more. But if Mary healed herself then Samantha might be so distracted that she might-

Wait, why did Mary care? Resting her hands on her knees so that Samantha could look over her knuckles, Mary twisted up her own face in confusion. She didn't know this woman, why did she give a shit whether or not the other woman was experiencing emotional pain or not. Tapping her foot on the ground, Mary attempted to focus enough to answer the question posed to her.

"Oh, the pic, yeah. No worries! She's just some vigilantee bitch that killed my whole family. No biggie! Not you's prob you's know!" Mary laughed uncomfortably, though she wasn't uncomfortable sharing, she just didn't understand why she cared to tell this woman. Maybe it was her cute face, or her comforting voice? She wasn't Mary's type, so it couldn't be that... Sighing, Mary continued.

"Sorry- guess I jus' been holdin' that in for a while. Ain't really had nobody to talk to, you's know? Whole fam dead, hah... Not a lotta ears to listen no more. Tried talkin' to the bae about it, but he didn't- he didn't help."

'Bae,' of course, being Todd. Not that they were actually dating, but Mary liked to mess with him. Even if he wasn't here to hear.

 

[Phoenix]

Sam swallowed a little hard at that and nodded her head. She imagined there weren’t many spaces that were safe for people like Mary to talk about this. And surely, unless there were some intense anti-vigilante groups out there, not many people would listen anyway. As far as Sam was aware, the public was pretty torn on them, but were generally rather disinterested as a whole. Not that the extremist TV stations would have you believing that. But with places like Vigilante Watch out there, vigilantes were gaining traction in the public eye.

With a heavy sigh, Sam looked at Mary, setting aside the equipment needed for the stitches. “A vigilante, huh? That’s rough. I thought they were all about helping people. What, uh, what happened?”

She opened the needle’s package, then the thread. A dry rag was pulled out alongside a hospital grade disinfectant. She tried to keep herself from appearing outwardly nervous as she poured it onto the rag, suppressing any signs that she already knew, any signs of her guilt. Having Mary know who she was was likely a bad idea. Maybe if Mary wasn’t in her gym, beneath her home– but no. There was no way telling her could go over well.

She reached out and took one of Mary’s hands and lifted the rag. “This is going to hurt a bit. I’m sorry.”

She moved the rag to Mary’s knuckles, gently massaging the injuries, to get any dust or dirt out of them. She knew how badly this stung, but regular people, people who didn’t have a body temperature of one hundred and three, they got infections. They got infections from poorly cleaned injuries. And looking over her legs, Sam was fairly sure that she didn’t need another badly healed injury.​

 

[Ira]

"What, uh, what happened?"

It was asked so innocently, so normally, that Mary almost started just straight up telling Samantha Walsh exactly what happened. But, as Mary's mouth opened, she paused, then slowly closed it back. Samantha wasn't actually asking what happened, she was asking in the polite way a stranger asks when they're trying to be nice. This woman didn't care, she was just trying to diffuse a tense situation. A tense situation that was directly Mary's fault.

Stupid, stupid Mary.

So Mary, laughing gently at the pain as the other woman cleaned her knuckles, tried to respond in the way a polite person would.

"Oh, you's know what happened..." A pause, as Mary considered how to next phrase her words. Then she continued, "Was in the wrong place at tha' wrong time. Just some, kids, I's guessin', took advantage of me and mine to make themselves feel big. Things got outta hand, my bros, they didn't make. You's know..."

Trying to change the subject, Mary noticed Samantha look over Mary's legs and sprung on that. Smiling as seductively as she could manage, Mary asked, "Like what you's see? Chicks do dig the scars, right?"

 

[Phoenix]

For a moment, Sam’s heart dropped. She almost dropped the alcohol as she wet another rag to clean the second hand as Mary paused at the worst possible line. Thankfully, she managed to keep her hold and instead smiled nervously. “Sure. Wrong place, wrong time. It happens. That’s still… rough, I imagine.”

It was only then, as she was pressing the rag to the second hand, that she registered Mary’s second comment. And she almost laughed. But she managed to keep it to just a chuckle. Maybe people were attracted to scars. Maybe she would have been as well, but… It was hard to be attracted to anything or anyone that wasn’t Todd. And Mary was definitely not Todd. No one else was Todd, or would ever be him.

She sighed after her chuckle and shook her head. “I happen to be in a very happy relationship with a wonderful guy named Todd. Otherwise, maybe. I bet you get a lot of girls like that, though.”

She set the rag aside and carefully lifted her needle and thread, turning back to Mary’s hands. She wished she had something heavy to numb her with, but unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do for this. So with a slight sigh, she took one of Mary’s hands in hers and readied herself to slide the needle into her skin.​

 

[Ira]

Mary's head twitched at the name, Todd, it couldn't be the same Todd that Mary knew- could it? I mean, this gym wasn't too far from Todd's mechanic shop, it was a small world after all. Maybe-? Well! No harm in asking!

"Todd- Todd... Couldn' be the same Todd I's know! Could-it? Tall skinny, curly hair, works at a mechanic shop, shapeshifts? Has my Bae been cheatin' on me?"

The words were formed in the same mindnumbing cadence that Mary's thoughts spoke in, but she spoke them aloud all the same. As Mary spoke, she watched the other woman's face closely. Maybe Mary overstepped- spoke too much? It wouldn't be the first time. Mary had more trouble shutting up than she did not speaking.

Then, as Mary noticed the needle, Mary waved Samantha's hands away. "No no- no needles. Don't like em- jus' lemmeee~" As Mary's voice slipped into a pattern of sing-song, she reached out and grasped the skin on her palm. Slowly, methodically, painfully, Mary tore and stretched at it. Her fingers practically vibrated from the pain as she pulled and stretched at the skin, binding it and twisting it over her broken skin.

With the wound clean, it was safer to do this- but Mary probably would've done it uncleanly anyway. Samantha at least helped so that Mary's Mending would actually take without infection. It made for a nasty sight, but once it was done, Mary was healed. Twisted scars, as though they were old, now bound themselves over her knuckles. Her hands still shaking, Mary finished by saying,

"Aaaall done!~"

 

[Phoenix]

Sam skipped at beat at the description of Todd. Todd… knew Mary? Todd had either met Mary before or after the incident with his huntsong. Either way, Mary knew who Todd was, and she was thrown so off kilter by that fact that she just dropped her hands when Mary waved them away, instead of insisting that she continue to give first aid. “That’s– yeah, that’s my Todd. How do you…?”

That was when she saw what Mary was doing.

She watched as the skin stretched and pulled, watched the shaking in the other woman’s hands as she did so. Her mouth dropped open slightly as she watched the process. That was… a really fucked up meta ability. But it made sense now, with all her other scars. God, what had happened to this woman? Had it been before or after Sam herself had helped to destroy her world? She couldn’t bring herself to ask. She couldn’t bring herself to bring it up, for fear that Mary would place her as Phoenix.

Honestly, this all just reinforced a decision she’d been mulling over for a while. She needed a new identity. A new mask. A new everything. She swallowed softly and looked at Mary’s face. “That’s intense. Are you sure that’s okay? I get not liking needles, but, uh… Surely it would have been nicer than whatever that was.”

She placed an easy-going smile back on her face, leaning back and beginning the process of packing up her first aid kits. She didn’t make a big deal about the powers. It was a really blatant and unguarded use of powers, but Sam wasn’t going to be the person telling her how she needed to be careful.​

 

[Ira]

Mary practically growled as she flexed her newly 'healed' fingers. Grinning like a madwoman, she fixed Samantha with a wild gaze and responded,

"Yeah! Todd! Todd the bae, he's n' me's met 'round his mechanic shop or sumthin'. Made him buy me food, ate his wallet out, hah! Nothin' serious tho- no worries girlfriend! He's aaaall yous's."

Standing up, Mary wrung her hands out and nodded her head in response to Samantha's questions about Mary's wellbeing. She was fine, truly, just in a lot of pain. But pain was a focuser, a narcotic, and a wonderful sensation. It gave clarity and strength to Mary, made her want to huff or hit something.

Glancing at Samantha, Mary asked, "Talk ta me girlfriend, what's eatin' you's mind? See- I'm a noticer of sorts. Notice aaaall sorts a' things. Like how you's didn' freak out at my powers- or how you's didn't blink an eye at ol' shapeshiftin' Todd. So means he told you's the truth 'bout his ab-ili-ties. Eats peeple~ Hehehehee!~"

Sinister or silly, there was no telling which was flashing behind Mary's eyes.

 

[Phoenix]

Sam nearly dropped the kit in her hands as Mary said, “Eats people.” Todd didn’t talk about that. Todd never talked about that. Even with her, it had taken prying to get him to talk to her about it on his birthday. His birthday. Her heat twisted painfully in her chest again. He’d been fine on New Year's Eve, though. And it had only been two days, really, but something was off. She snapped back to the present moment as she remembered there was someone there. God, she hoped she hadn’t been making a face.

“Oh, that. I’m just… used to metahumans, I guess. I’ve known quite a few. While Todd is… a bit of an outlier, nothing really surprises me, you know? That looked really painful. Are you sure you’re okay?” She smiled again, trying to avoid answering Mary’s question once more. It was better if no one knew that she hadn’t heard from Todd since New Year’s Day. Especially someone like Mary, no matter how friendly their relationship might be.

After all, Sam would have to be blind and deaf to not see the flyers around the city. The ones that proclaimed for people to ‘come see Mary’. Sam didn’t know how she knew, but she knew the Mary sitting in front of her was that Mary. The Mary who was recruiting people for her Anti-Meta Militia. That Mary was dangerous, which meant the woman sitting in front of her was dangerous.

For all she knew, Mary was involved in why Sam hadn’t heard from Todd in forty hours.

She finished packing away the first aid kits while she talked, but anyone with a good eye would notice the slight tremble in her hands. That slight shaking, that gentle trembling, that was entirely related to Todd and not at all related to Mary.​

 

[Ira]

The pain had been faded away from Mary's knuckles as she finished speaking, so she could've swore she felt a twist of pain from Samantha when Mary mentioned Todd eating people. Of course- Mary couldn't be sure it wasn't her own heart flipping a lid over the skin pulling. Even if the pain originated from Samantha, it wasn't like it mattered too much.

Todd eating corpses wasn't exactly a great thing, even if Mary accepted him nonetheless.

Listening to Samantha speak, Mary nodded and watched the woman carefully. Something seemed to dawn on the girl if the new trembling in her hands was anything to go off of. Better judgement took hold of Mary's mind at that. She was a business woman now, other people's lives hung in the balance of Mary's scales. She couldn't just act stupid and ditzy all the time.

Sighing, Mary replied, "Course it hurt, still kinda hurts, but tha's fine. Pain is power girl- Samantha," Mary's tone had shifted to something a little more serious, though it didn't lose its joviality entirely. Still smiling, she continued, "Listen, somthin's clearly botherin' you's. Wanna talk about it? I'm not a bad ear you's know. I's work in charity!"

At that, Mary reached out to gently set a hand on Samantha's hand. Mary wasn't sure how 'reassuring' her hands were, but Mary felt like this was the right thing to do.